Belmond Reid's Palace

William Reid, a Scot who arrived in Madeira with little and built a hotel empire, opened his clifftop palace outside Funchal in 1891, and it has anchored the island's reputation for genteel escape ever since. The pink building stands on a headland wrapped in ten acres of subtropical gardens, where centuries of mild Atlantic climate allow jacaranda, frangipani and banana to flourish above the sea.

The hotel's history is woven into twentieth-century lore: Winston Churchill famously came to paint and write, and George Bernard Shaw took tango lessons on the lawn. That heritage survives most visibly in the ritual of afternoon tea on the terrace, taken above a sheer drop to the Atlantic, and in the old-fashioned courtesies of a long-serving staff. Saltwater pools terrace down the cliff, with a lift descending to sea-level bathing platforms.

Rooms are classically dressed with balconies angled at the ocean or the bay of Funchal, and dining ranges from a formal dining room to relaxed Italian and poolside tables. Madeira's levada walks, Monte gardens and Funchal's old town are all close. Reid's is not fashionable and does not try to be; it is the Atlantic's most enduring grande dame.